LegendaryLife.com Blog

I have noticed a seismic shift happening in many areas of our shared world cultures which I feel is going in the wrong direction. It seems people from all walks of life are no longer taking personal ownership of the problems that arise from their lifestyle choices.

What is personal responsibility?

Personal responsibility is the acknowledgment that if you try something, no matter the intentions or chances behind said act succeeding, that you will take ownership of the consequences. For instance, if I decide to spend all my lunch money on a trinket, I have nobody to blame but myself for being hungry for the rest of the day.

Personal Responsibility: Lifestyle

Let’s be frank, if you choose on a daily basis, over several decades, to stuff your face, avoid exercise like the plague followed by working a job that you hate, who is to blame? Later in life, you find-out that you are obese, depressed and penniless because you wasted away your health and financial opportunities on self-serving instant-gratification decisions. Who is to blame for your shell of a life? Well, YOU ARE! Looking to place blame on society, “friends”, anybody or anything else is simply an illusion that you have created for yourself in order to cope with your carelessness and impunity towards yourself. You abused yourself, it’s your job to undo the damage and nobody else. Of course, at your cost in both time and money, not societies!

Personal Responsibility: Lifestyle (real-life manifestations)

Here are a few examples that come to mind

• politicians who “don’t recall” important events in their career, if they where that clueless in their position, they should give their salary back with interest as it shows how little value they brought for our tax dollars (we got scammed)
• doctors who refuse to say “I’m sorry” for mistakenly treating patients who didn’t suffer from the condition they treated them for or worse, actions that where responsible for their death (legal issues be damned, we are all human and DO make mistakes)
• school kids who don’t pick-up after themselves because a janitor will do it for them
• obese people (by choice, not due to a diagnosed medical condition) who seem to think it’s their RIGHT to pay for only one seat on an airplane when, due to personal decisions, their frame requires two or worse, seem to think it’s “insurances responsibility” to pay for all the pills and surgery that are a direct cause of their lack of self-care
• teenagers who blame their boyfriend / girlfriend when she gets pregnant
• people who got themselves into a sub-prime mortgage in order to buy a house they otherwise couldn’t afford and now blame the lender, government and everybody else for the resultant foreclosure
• Hillary Clinton asking her supporters and Obama to help her pay back debts that SHE chose to ring-up in her bid for the presidential race
• CEOs who get multi-million dollar salaries while the companies they manage lose market value and face insolvency
• people who choose to gamble at casinos, suffer huge losses then blame the casinos for their losses
• people who buy huge SUVs and complain about the high-price of gas as they commute ALONE to and from work when viable public transportation is offered
• individuals who decide it’s a great idea to invest money they cannot afford to loose into the stock market and when a company has some trouble, blame them for not being able to pay their bills
• smokers who complain about the high price (financially) of their habit, considering they are spending money to destroy their health, seem to think it’s societies responsibility to take care of them when they become sick. The argument seems to be “I am paying taxes now to fund my future health problems”
• (I could go on - but I hope you get the point)

Why do so many people avoid personal responsibility?

I believe as cultures increasingly put their self-esteem into the products instead of themselves (consumer society), the very act of being responsible for things slowly dissolves away. If todays “must haves” become tomorrows “who cares”, what kind of a lesson is this for yourself? Taking Hillary Clinton for example, she choose to borrow money to her campaign but now expects OTHERS to pay her back and the debts owed to other companies who helped her during her bid. If media reports are true, this very expectation is completely UNACCEPTABLE in a civil society!

Where do we go from here?

Well, I believe we need some fundamental shifts in how children are brought-up in this world and adults are educated. Schools shouldn’t have janitors. Why not have the kids clean-up after themselves and clean the school for a few minutes before the end of the day? People who decide to get themselves into debt or buy more then they can afford shouldn’t be allowed to file for bankruptcy (unless the reason was due to medical emergencies not brought-on by lifestyle choices). I believe each and every executive in every company should have their salary pegged to the value of the company they are managing, if their company makes a profit, so do they, if not, they go without! I believe people who suffer from bad lifestyle choices shouldn’t be able to look at society to “help-them-out” unless it was brought-on by factors out of their control. For instance, drug addicts who are given methadone treatment should instead be sent away for two years of tough military training.

Am I being a little Extreme?

Actually, I believe that not only is our word our bond but more importantly, a culture of “self” should be treated as such. Sure, people screw-up but you know what, that is what builds character… having lifelines only helps weaken the resolve to fix what went wrong and the lessons they hold. Is it extreme to refuse a double-lung transplant to a long-time smoker? Absolutely NOT! Is it wrong to execute a known drug dealer? Absolutely NOT! Is it distasteful to demand that our politicians, professionals and CEOs be help to higher standards? NO WAY!

The Bottom Line

If we want to live in a society of “self-interest” than we need to abide to these rules even when things go bad.